Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi / ClubJamesBond
Diego Rivera: A Dream of Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park, detail of center, see right-hand figure.
Posted on 12/19/2002 4:02:10 AM PST by dennisw
This is a point I have made several times. The Catholic Church needs to stop "frowning" on these practices and instead should outlaw them and punish them as severely as they should pedophile priests. If you wonder why Protestants "frown" on the unbiblical practice of praying to saints, then re-read this article and let it sink in -- this is no one-time heresy in the hinterlands, but rather the general state of the Catholic Church outside the English-speaking churches.
Yes, and keep your pet
chickens away from fans of
Jennifer Lopez!
Those who live outside the American Southwest don't know the problem that it is even here -- a large percentage of the people here are Latin American immigrants. What seems a harmless and wholesome practice in, say, Ohio is a horrible heresy here.
Never mind the facts though -- expect denials and attacks from the folks I pinged.
As Don Juan told his apprentice, Carlos Casteneda:
Your death is your truest advisor. It always rides just off to your right shoulder, and at times of great danger, you can glance rapidly to your right and ask it: 'Are you coming for me today?' And he will tell you. If he says No--you know that the crisis will pass.
I know of few Christians who so truly believe that this life is not the only life--or even the important one. Let's be careful about condemning another perspective on life, as viewed from the universal leveler--Death. It may have something to teach us, even as we see it's flaws and limitations.
I find nothing of merit in neolithic observances.
Let's be careful about condemning another perspective on life, as viewed from the universal leveler--Death.
Any criticism in my post is reserved for the Roman Catholic church, which has a quite distinct and well-promulgated position in this matter. I personally do not care if Northern Mexicans worship a head of lettuce, just don't ask me to underwrite other's folly.
2111 Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.[41]
2112 The first commandment condemns polytheism. It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one true God. Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of "idols, [of] silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see." These empty idols make their worshippers empty: "Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them."[42] God, however, is the "living God"[43] who gives life and intervenes in history.
2113 Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and mammon."[44] Many martyrs died for not adoring "the Beast"[45] refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.[46]
2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future.[48] Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.
2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another's credulity.
[end quotation]
Older catechisms will state flatly (and they are correct in doing so) that activity like that described by the article is a mortal sin against the First commandment. That means it damns a person to hell.
What more do you expect us to say? Protestants act like it's the Church's fault that unconverted people who are at most nominally Catholic act like unconverted people. There are plenty of mainline Protestants who act like unconverted people, too. Most of the historically Protestant nations of Europe are effectively atheistic; it's only a matter of time before they lapse into Islam or paganism. Is that Protestantism's fault?
Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi / ClubJamesBond
Diego Rivera: A Dream of Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park, detail of center, see right-hand figure.
They don't read the catechism, they have been poorly catechised, if at all, and they won't go to hell because of invincible ignorance.
And yes, Protestants who fall away or have a poor grasp of the faith are falling into not so much atheism, but the occult and new age, etc.
Both Protestants and Catholics do not present the true faith to the people. The Catholic church does little or nothing to stop the spread of false apparitions. They are afraid if they crack down on these things people will leave. So they do nothing and let them contaminate the rest of the flock who are struggling to maintain the truth as they understand it.
It's all caused by a desperate spiritual hunger everywhere.
Agreed, but would they listen even if the catechesis were available?
they won't go to hell because of invincible ignorance.
Invincible ignorance is a thin thread on which to hang one's eternal destiny. But if they are really *invincibly* ignorant, catechesis wouldn't help (almost by definition).
Is this "saint of death"
a part of Santeria?
Are they related?
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, used by John O'Hara here.
Many of the over 300 murdered girls and women along the border in Ciudad Juarez were killed in satanic rituals, many were drained of their blood and had bizarre cuts made on their bodies, nipples bit off. One drug trafficker was found with a nipple on a necklace, most likely from one of these murdered women. This stuff is no joke, there are people living in terror and these are very evil people.
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